POPnews - December 7th

[As these things go, it's a third-rate planet in the boondocks of the
galaxy, but I like it better than any place I've ever lived thus far.]
43 BCE - Roman statesman and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero was assassinated.

1696 - Connecticut Route 108 - one of the oldest extant roads in the US - was completed through Trumbull; it was then known as the Farm Highway, and is now called Nichols Avenue.

1724 - Religious unrest following the execution of nine Protestant citizens and the mayor of Thorn (Toruń) by Polish authorities resulted in the Tumult of Thorn, an event still observed in remembrance there at St. Mary's Church.

1732 - The Royal Opera House opened at London's Covent Garden.

1776 - France's Marquis de Lafayette attempted to enter the American military as a major general through the American agent in Paris, Silas Deane.

1787 - Delaware became the first state to ratify the US Constitution, making it the first US state.

1889 - Gilbert & Sullivan's comic light opera The Gondoliers premiered at the Savoy Theatre in London.

1916 - David Lloyd George was elected Prime Minister of Great Britain.

1930 - W1XAV in Boston broadcast video from the CBS radio orchestra program, The Fox Trappers; the broadcast also included America's first television commercial, an advertisement for I.J. Fox Furriers, who sponsored the radio show.

1946 - A fire at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta killed 119.

1955 - Clement Attlee stepped down as leader of Britain's Labour Party to be created Earl Attlee and Viscount Prestwood by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II ten days later.

1963 - Instant replay was used for the first time at an Army-Navy game in Philadelphia.

1965 - Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras simultaneously lifted mutual excommunications against their respective positions that had been in place since 1054.

1972 - Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, was launched; during the flight the crew took the photograph known as The Blue Marble.

1982 - Charles Brooks, Jr. became the first person executed by lethal injection in the United States.

1987 - Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771 crashed near Paso Robles, California, killing all 43 on board, after a disgruntled passenger shot his ex-boss traveling on the flight, then shot both pilots and himself.

1993 - Colin Ferguson murdered 6 and injured 19 during the so-called Long Island Railroad Massacre.

1995 - The Galileo spacecraft arrived at Jupiter, a little more than six years after it was launched by Space Shuttle Atlantis during Mission STS-34.

2006 - A tornado struck Kensal Green in North West London, seriously damaging around 150 properties - none of which were mobile homes.
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POPnews - February 17th

[Try as I might to find colour pictures to accompany POPnews, this week the Internet Photo Gods continue sending me black and white photos instead, meaning you the reader get yet another glimpse at this dull, lifeless surface; still, if this were another blog the dull lifeless surface you'd be looking at would be Paris Hilton... You're welcome!]
1600 - The philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake by the Roman Inquisition at Rome's Campo de' Fiori for teaching such despicable heresies as heliocentrism. Because that's what Jesus would have done.

1621 - Myles Standish was appointed the first military commander of Plymouth Colony.

1801 - An Electoral College tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr was resolved when Jefferson was elected President and Burr Vice President by the US House of Representatives.

1854 - The United Kingdom recognized the independence of the Orange Free State.

1864 - During the American Civil War the H. L. Hunley became the first submarine to engage and sink a warship, in this case the USS Housatonic.

1871 - The victorious Prussian Army paraded though Paris after the end of the Siege of Paris, the principal conflict of the Franco-Prussian War.

1904 - Giacomo Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly (with a libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa) premiered at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. In the starring roles were Rosina Storchio (as Cio-Cio San), Giovanni Zenatello (as B. F. Pinkerton), and Giuseppe De Luca (as US consul Sharpless). It was, in fact, Puccini's first version of the opera, meant to be performed in two acts; after a disastrous opening, the show was rewritten into three acts, and thereafter flourished.

1913 - The Armory Show opened in New York City, displaying works of artists who were to become some of the most influential painters of the early 20th century.

1933 - The Blaine Act repealed the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, ending Prohibition in the United States; it would be accepted as the Twenty-first Amendment on December 5th.

1936 - The world's first superhero, The Phantom, made his first appearance in comics.

1958 - Pope Pius XII declared Saint Clare of Assisi the patron saint of television.

1959 - Turkish Prime Minister Adnan Menderes survived an air crash a few miles short of the runway at London's Gatwick Airport near the Sussex village of Rusper which killed 12 people.

1965 - As part of NASA's Project Ranger, the Ranger 8 probe was launched on its mission to photograph the Mare Tranquillitatis region of the Moon in preparation for the manned Apollo missions to come; the so-called 'Sea of Tranquility' would eventually become the site chosen for the Apollo 11 lunar landing.

1974 - Robert K. Preston, a disgruntled U.S. Army private, buzzed the White House at 2 AM with a helicopter stolen from nearby Fort Meade, Maryland; neither President Richard Nixon nor any of his family were in residence at the time.

1992 - A court in Milwaukee sentenced serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer to 957 years in prison on 15 counts of first-degree murder.

1995 - Colin Ferguson was convicted of six counts of murder for the December 1993 Long Island Rail Road shootings; he later received a 200+ year sentence.

1996 - In Philadelphia, world champion Garry Kasparov beat the Deep Blue supercomputer in a chess match.

2003 - The London Congestion Charge scheme began.

2008 - Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia.
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